Photo courtesy Kansas Sebastian, Flickr

Restore v. RehabilitateWhich Is Right For Your Historic House?

This decision will involve understanding your home’s history, architecture, and present condition of its materials, finishes, and systems. Also consider your household’s lifestyle and what personal needs the finished house must accommodate. More broadly, local historic district designations, local building codes, property insurance and other regulatory or financial considerations will impact the path you take.

1. Identify the factors that will shape your decision.

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Who lived in the house and when? Did important events occur there? Did either (or both) scenarios have historical significance? If so, you could consider restoring the house to that period to help interpret its history.

2. Review the house’s history.

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To restore a house means to return its interior and exterior appearance to a particular date or time period. Strict restorations -- ones that eliminate everything not present during the period chosen -- are rare for homes, with most owners opting to maintain modern systems (plumbing, anyone?) and sympathetically designed changes, such as later additions, that add to the house’s history.

3. Know what “restore” means.

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To rehabilitate a house means to make it useful and functional for contemporary living while preserving important historic and architectural features. For example, a rehabilitated old house would always include modern electrical, mechanical, and plumbing systems, a modern kitchen, and other attributes typical of present-day homes.

4. Know what “rehabilitate” means.

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The major difference between restoring and rehabilitating is to either exactly duplicate a particular period or concentrate on preserving a sense of the changes that have occurred over time. For example, if an Italianate-style house had lost its wood eave brackets, a restoration project would duplicate them in wood as they originally appeared, while a rehab project would add new brackets of a compatible design in an appropriate substitute material (ex. fiberglass).

5. Choose your approach.

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Consider the quality, design, materials, and craftsmanship of the original house as well as the changes that have occurred over time. Compatible interior and exterior changes of the same or better quality than the original house, even if done in different styles or materials, should probably be kept and restored. Conversely, you should probably remove any poorly designed or executed changes.

6. Evaluate existing alterations.

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When adding to or altering your home, consider its scale (apparent size), actual dimension, and massing (proportion/balance). Use materials, textures, and colors similar to those of the original building.

7. Design new additions and alterations with attention to detail.

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The key to a quality rehabilitation is how well it accommodates modern technologies and living styles. Keep changes non-intrusive and compatible with the house’s design and style, and don’t let alterations destroy or cover historically or architecturally significant features or materials.

8. Integrate modern touches with care and caution.

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This might seem counter-intuitive, but you actually do want to be able to tell additions apart from the original so the house’s history is visible and transparent. Also be careful not to design additions that make the house appear to date from an earlier or later period, or alter the house’s details to an extent that suggest a different architectural period.

9. Take care not to falsify the house’s history.

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For a more detailed list of recommendations, check out the Secretary of Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. This jam-packed resource from the National Park Service includes guidelines on preservation, rehabilitating, restoring, and reconstructing historic buildings.

10. Look to the experts.

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Ten on Tuesday features ten preservation tips each week. For more tips, visit blog.PreservationNation.org.